This study focuses on the relationship between children's experience with discontinuity in their lives. Specifically, children are studied in transition from elementary school to middle school and to junior high school as they enter adolescence. Children's competencies are examined longitudinally across school settings, from their own perspective as well as from that of their teachers and peers, before and after transition. The measurements include (a) children's perceptions and teachers' ratings of their social competence, (b) children's perceptions of their social self, and (c) children's friendship patterns, based on self- and peer-report. These indices of social competence are examined in relation to (a) children's perceptions and teachers' ratings of their cognitive, physical, and general competence; (b) teachers' ratings of children's over-all academic standing; (c) children's perceptions of their school environment, and (d) indices of children's physical maturation. For a subsample of these children, competence indices also will be examined in relation to their environments outside of school.